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Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty is a new collection of left-wing pro-market, anticapitalist anarchist writing, edited by Gary Chartier & Charles W. Johnson. Individualist anarchists believe in mutual exchange, not economic privilege. They believe in freed markets, not capitalism. They defend a distinctive response to the challenges of ending global capitalism and achieving social justice: eliminate the political privileges that prop up capitalists. Massive concentrations of wealth, rigid economic hierarchies, and unsustainable modes of production are not the results of the market form, but of markets deformed and rigged by a network of state-secured controls and privileges to the business class. Markets Not Capitalism explores the gap between radically freed markets and the capitalist-controlled markets that prevail today. It explains how liberating market exchange from state capitalist privilege can abolish structural poverty, help working people take control over the conditions of their labor, and redistribute wealth and social power. Featuring discussions of socialism, capitalism, markets, ownership, labor struggle, grassroots privatization, intellectual property, health care, racism, sexism, and environmental issues, this unique collection brings together classic essays by leading figures in the anarchist tradition, including Proudhon and Voltairine de Cleyre, and such contemporary innovators as Kevin Carson and Roderick Long. It introduces an eye-opening approach to radical social thought, rooted equally in libertarian socialism and market anarchism.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"We on the left need a good shake to get us thinking, and these arguments for market anarchism do the job in lively and thoughtful fashion." Alexander Cockburn, editor and publisher, Counterpunch --Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch

"It will be hard for any honest libertarian to read this book or others like it and ever again be taken in by the big business-financed policy institutes and think tanks. In a world where libertarianism has mostly been deformed into a defense of corporate privilege, it is worth being told or reminded what a free market actually is. Our ideal society is not Tesco/Wal-Mart minus the State. It is a community of communities of free people. All thanks to the authors and editors of this book." Sean Gabb, director, UK Libertarian Alliance --Sean Gabb, UK Libertarian Alliance

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This is an extremely well done collection of essays on left-wing libertarianism/anarchism. This is a position I wasn't too familiar with and find myself sympathetic with. I'm a long time libertarian but find myself uncomfortable with everything big as in big corporations and big government who inevitably end up partners in crime.

The articles by the two editors Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson were excellent. Along with other authors Kevin Carson and Roderick T. Long you will find many outstanding essays. I liked the modern articles much better than the historical ones, but some of those were also good especially the ones by Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess.

There are some devastating critiques in this volume about how the government props up corporations and the well off and connected while at the same time harming the poor. This should be required reading for left-wing and progressives of every type.

I had given up on my youthful anarcho-capitalist ideas as unworkable, but this volume reignited them. I was unaware of these writers / bloggers. These guys are excellent and deep thinkers.

I've only finished Part I and flipped through the rest, but this is rocketing to the top of my non-fiction reading list to finish every page. The essays are on the whole carefully selected, well-organized, well written, and a pleasure to read. Whatever one's political persuasion - left or right leaning Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Socialist, Communist, or other - if you are a thinking non-sociopath you will probably find new and interesting perspectives here that will challenge your worldview and may move you along your intellectual journey in unexpected and fruitful ways. These writers are far from the mainstream of political thought, yet have produced thoughtful and compelling essays that deserve a far wider audience. If you love liberty, but see free-market capitalism as too unconcerned with the plight of the disadvantaged, and too rigged in favor of the holders of capital, you will find this a fresh and exciting read, full of peaceful revolutionary ideas.

This text serves to dismantle the false dichotomy of State vs. the Capitalist. This fairytale has given way to joint-exploitation of the poor and oppressed by politicians and business elite.

The central thesis is that state coercion violently enforces capitalist privileges to the detriment of the masses. The state cannot be effectively used to ameliorate the injustices of corporate monopoly and rent-seeking because the state will always favor the politically-connected elite.

If more people read this book, the world would be a far better place. Highly recommended for political economists, left libertarians and market anarchists. Five stars.

Im only about 1/4 of the way through this book so Im in no position to give a detailed review but I will say this: if you believe in natural rights, if you consider yourself a libertarian, voluntarilyist, mutualist, syndicalist, anarcho-capitalist, socialist, or anarchist please read this book. Im not kidding you! Lol Please read this book.

Excellent book. This left/right anarchism thing seems silly to me. For example, this book describes the exact same capitalism of anarcho-capitalists. The authors just replace the word capitalism with markets, they acknowledge this.

I wish there wasn't this divisive concept of left/right anarchism. All anarchists embrace (or should embrace) anarcho-anything. Anarcho-anything is good because no-one will be harming anyone else. So why the silly distinction of left/right? Can't we work to abolish statism together?

More About the Author

My motto these days is, "Give peace a chance." I hope my writing and speaking can help people find ways to craft patterns of life marked by peaceful, voluntary cooperation.

Everything I've published to date has been non-fiction. I write about law, politics, ethics, and religion, largely from a philosophical perspective.

My philosophical work is very much in the analytic tradition, though I'm inclined to embrace the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and David Ray Griffin. In moral and political philosophy, I've been influenced by people including Thomas Nagel, John Finnis, David Wiggins, and Owen Flanagan, along with my Center for a Stateless Society compatriots Roderick T. Long, Charles W. Johnson, Kevin Carson, Sheldon Richman, Joe Stromberg, and Brad Spangler. In philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, I've gained a lot from current and not-so-current thinkers including, apart from people I've already mentioned, Karl Rahner, Nicholas Lash, Austin Farrer, David Brown, John Macquarrie, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Robert Adams, Fritz Guy, Charles Teel, Jr., David Larson, and John Hick.

Politically, I'm a left-wing market anarchist. I take anarchism to be the project of doing without the state. I support the elimination of states and their replacement by a diverse array of consensual communities in which people experiment with ways of being human and of being free.

I'm a market anarchist because (while I don't think everyone should be forced into a cookie-cutter mold), I'd opt for a state-free community in which people enjoyed robust individual possessory rights and were free to structure relationships through exchange. My market anarchism is left-wing because I support inclusion and oppose subordination, deprivation, and aggressive and preventive war. I own the American individualist anarchists, especially Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner, as forebears; thus, I'm happy to identify as a socialist in something like the sense suggested by Tucker's work.

My day job is as associate dean of La Sierra University's School of Business. At La Sierra, I teach courses in business ethics, global poverty, employee and labor relations, religion and science, political philosophy, and social theory. On a more personal level: I'm sentimental and nostalgic. I'm an insomniac, an early riser, a geek, a technophile, and a vegetarian. I abhor positional authority. Friendship is central to who I am. Born in Glendale, I've lived in SoCal most of my life and it still moves and excites me. I devour TV shows via Netflix. And I read, and read, and read.